Pirselimoğlu’s ‘Pus’ a hazy picture of İstanbul’s outskirts

This is a tale of interior drama, reflected astutely by its exteriors. And it is by no means to be dismissed despite a certain difficulty in understanding the personal motives of its almost mute lead. Reşat is an incredibly expressionless man; his days with his mother at home rely on routine and a certain fed-upness shown only through uncomfortable silences. He works at a bootleg DVD print store planted in a squalid concrete office building that reminds one of a parking lot. He doesn’t talk much with his macho colleagues, either, many of them rather shady. Of course, they’re not aware of how the seemingly harmless Reşat will eventually find his own shady side.

One day, a man he works with gets killed right in front of him. Inside the jacket of the dead man Reşat finds a gun and a photo of a middle-aged woman, behind the photo her address written. Realizing that the man was hired to kill the woman, he suddenly starts to take an interest. Reşat finds her and follows her around. She lives in the neighborhood and works at a textile factory. Later he meets her husband, who seems to love his wife very much. Reşat and the husband embark on an unexpected friendship. The husband opens up to Reşat; he says that he suspects that his wife has been cheating on him. He loves his wife so much and can’t take the pain of this betrayal, so he wants her killed. Of course, the “unsuspecting husband” is not aware that Reşat has already figured this all out.

It won’t be a surprise for the viewer to witness a downward spiral involving these three characters. Once there is a gun planted in a film, someone will have to use it.

“Pus” is, in the end, Reşat’s story. Though it is all comprehensible that the general atmosphere of destitution that looms upon his life and his monosyllabic attitude is a vessel for his rebellious resentment, the film never allows the viewer to fully understand who Reşat really is or why he gets into muddy waters. He remains a mystery throughout the film while Pirselimoğlu and Sarı present a character whose face does not give into any decipherable expression. Reşat does not even blink, does not frown, does not twitch, does not smile. Even when he tries to communicate with the neighbor’s daughter whom he has a crush on, he is just vapid. He is never there.

Is he just a shadow of a human being, or is he just a complete nutcase? This extreme deadpan style can sometimes push the viewer away from the story. Of course, we cannot empathize with every screen character, but at least there should have been something about Reşat that could have further lured the audience into fully engaging in this drama.

Though the obscurity with the inner drama is maintained throughout, “Pus” remains a beautifully filmed picture that brings a realistic depiction of people that have been shunned from the city and left to “rot” inside and outside in the suburbs.